Are You Crying For Real, or Just Pretending? – A guest article by Jason Morningstar about the concepts of safety that can be drifted from larping to tabletop role-playing games.

Phil Vecchione wrote an article on safety tools at the table, and we were approached around the same time about an article on larping lessons that could be applied to tabletop RPGs regarding safety. Since the topic of safety at the table is one of…

8 thoughts on “Are You Crying For Real, or Just Pretending? – A guest article by Jason Morningstar about the concepts of safety…”

I’m gonna risk being outspoken (surprising nobody I’m sure) and point out that while people complaining about safety tools breaking their immersion or whatever is not cool, it’s important to recognize that while people are more important than games (100% true), it’s also true that games can be really important to people for a variety of reasons. Having your game sidelined for whatever reason, even totally valid and important reasons, can be a big deal, and feeling really upset about it does not automatically make someone a villain.

Being a jerk about it does, obviously, but i think acknowledging people’s sadness, disappointment, or even anger when something they might rely on for stress relief or catharsis or whatever is disrupted, can go a long way toward encouraging people not to feel resentment toward the person whose safety was violated.

This is not new to human psychology, people struggle with conflicting feelings all the time, like being angry with an elderly relative for taking up so much of your time, and not having an outlet for those feelings, so you end up secretly wishing they would just die, and then hating yourself for that. Obviously that’s an extreme example, but that cognitive dissonance can come from relatively small stakes things like gaming just as easily.

I should probably go read the article before posting, but I’m at work, so apologies if this was all covered.

< ![CDATA[I'm gonna risk being outspoken (surprising nobody I'm sure) and point out that while people complaining about safety tools breaking their immersion or whatever is not cool, it's important to recognize that while people are more important than games (100% true), it's also true that games can be really important to people for a variety of reasons. Having your game sidelined for whatever reason, even totally valid and important reasons, can be a big deal, and feeling really upset about it does not automatically make someone a villain.
Being a jerk about it does, obviously, but i think acknowledging people's sadness, disappointment, or even anger when something they might rely on for stress relief or catharsis or whatever is disrupted, can go a long way toward encouraging people not to feel resentment toward the person whose safety was violated.
This is not new to human psychology, people struggle with conflicting feelings all the time, like being angry with an elderly relative for taking up so much of your time, and not having an outlet for those feelings, so you end up secretly wishing they would just die, and then hating yourself for that. Obviously that's an extreme example, but that cognitive dissonance can come from relatively small stakes things like gaming just as easily.
I should probably go read the article before posting, but I'm at work, so apologies if this was all covered.]]>

< ![CDATA[Dave Michalak I get what you're saying, but "don't be a jerk about your feelings" is, to me, basic adulting. It kind of goes without saying.
E.g., if I have to cancel a game because my kid is sick, I'm allowed to feel annoyed, but I am also expected to get over it, not blame anyone (except god), and move on.]]>